ELMONT, N.Y. — He is 39, but at that moment Sunday afternoon, he became a kid on a pond again, slinging a puck into the back of the net, then belly flopping onto the ice, sliding over the blue line in delirium. Alex Ovechkin established himself as a goal scorer without peer. There’s no point in acting your age.
With a sizzling wrist shot — so appropriately on the power play, so appropriately from just outside the left faceoff circle — the Washington Capitals’ absolute icon beat a New York Islanders goalie named Ilya Sorokin, a fellow Russian. In a box above the ice at UBS Arena, Wayne Gretzky rose from his chair and clapped. For the first time in 11,338 days, Gretzky did not hold the NHL’s record for goals. Ovechkin did.
“They say records are made to be broken,” Gretzky told the crowd, facing Ovechkin, a few moments later. “But I’m not sure who’s going to get more goals than that.”
That would be 895. Eight hundred ninety-five.
“This is something crazy,” Ovechkin said afterward. “I’m probably going to need a couple more days or maybe a couple weeks to realize what does it mean to be number one. But I can say: I’m very proud.”
Process it. Savor it. Consider how unlikely it seemed a decade ago, five years ago, even early last season, when Ovechkin went long stretches without a goal and Gretzky’s record seemed further and further off.
And then think about how the record only solidifies how Ovechkin’s arrival in Washington two decades ago completely transformed how a town felt about a sport.
“I just want to remind everybody there’s like — what would it be? — like B.C.,” Capitals owner Ted Leonsis said.
Make that B.O. — Before Ovechkin. Another era. So distant.
“Right,” Leonsis said. “And then to be out on the ice and see that many Caps fans there and the people in red chanting his name? You can’t overstate how much he’s changed things.”
Sunday was about the moment and the man, and the on-ice ceremony celebrated it all. The NHL stopped the game and rolled out a carpet emblazoned with “895,” and both teams stood to the side, tapping their sticks on the ice in respect. Gretzky offered his hand to Ovechkin, and they embraced.
And then he took the mic.
“What a day, huh?” said Ovechkin, who reset the record in his 1,487th game, the same number Gretzky played. “Like I always said, all the time, it’s a team sport, and without my boys — the whole organization, the fans, the trainers, coaches — I would never stand there and obviously I would never pass the Great One. So, fellas, thank you very much. I love you so much.”
When he was done, Ovechkin kissed mother Tatyana, wife Nastya and sons Sergei and Ilya. That he did this as a father of two boys old enough to understand what their papa just accomplished drives home exactly how long he has tied up those yellow skate laces for the Capitals, for Washington.
Remember when he arrived? Shoot, if you’re in high school or even college, you don’t. It was that long ago.
This was 2005. Major League Baseball had just returned to the District. Joe Gibbs was in his second stint in town, trying to revive the NFL team. Washington — where a still newish MCI Center gave the Capitals a downtown home — was decidedly tepid about hockey. In the most recent season before Ovechkin showed up, only five NHL teams drew fewer fans than the Caps.
Ovechkin changed that. Not immediately. But eventually. He first pushed the Capitals into the playoffs in 2008. From that “Rock the Red” run — when he won his first of three Hart Trophies as the NHL’s MVP — the Capitals sold out 588 straight games.
Hockey, for so long, was the city’s most successful sport. The Stanley Cup run of 2018 — led by Ovechkin, defined by Ovechkin — buried the idea that the nation’s capital had become home only to athletic misery. He made the idea of winning — winning it all — possible.
“Twenty years back, I mean,” said Nicklas Backstrom, his primary center for 17 years, “it was not a lot of hockey back here.”
Gretzky’s name has long been synonymous with the sport. But it was also obvious that passing him transcends hockey. The video tribute that played after the on-ice ceremony featured characters from all corners of the athletic and entertainment worlds — Michael Phelps and Steve Carell, Michael Jordan and Vince Vaughn, Ryan Zimmerman and Snoop Dogg, Derek Jeter and Katie Ledecky — sharing their congratulations.
“It’s such a cool moment for me to have video from legends,” Ovechkin said.
Remember when he entered last season 72 goals shy of tying Gretzky? He followed that with the longest slump of his career, eight goals in his first 43 games. He was 38. It was reasonable to assume he was slowing down. It was logical to conclude Gretzky was safe.
But this march to pass him simply reemphasizes what a remarkable athlete and competitor Ovechkin is.
“To do what he’s doing at this age is incredible,” said defenseman John Carlson, a teammate for 16 seasons. “I think people are sleeping on that.”
Regardless of the tread that has worn off the tires, when Ovechkin can sniff a milestone, he wants to consume it whole. His second-period goal against the Islanders — his 42nd of the season for No. 895 — made it seven goals in his past seven games, an unrelenting charge toward the mark.
This all came in a 4-1 loss. Yet there were so many smiles, so much ceremony, so much relief. Before Ovechkin arrived in the visiting dressing room, the Capitals all changed into red “895” T-shirts. Someone shouted, “Where are the beers?” — and they were needed because, when the captain finally entered, they sprayed him with foam.
Ovechkin put his head down, and his teammates swallowed him. The group hug then jumped and chanted. “O! O! O! O!” They were — as Ovechkin was when he scored — like children.
“Biggest goal in the history of the game,” shouted left wing Tom Wilson, who slid Ovechkin the tape-to-tape pass that led to the record breaker.
“It makes me a little bit emotional,” Wilson said later, “because I just think so much of him.”
The entire scene was emotional. Forever teammates Backstrom and T.J. Oshie, out this season with chronic injuries, hugged their old teammate. “Atta boy, GOAT!” someone barked, officially christening Ovechkin as the greatest of all time. Eventually, the Capitals gave their captain a standing ovation. He stood in the middle of them.
“It’s not me,” he said. “We did it. Let’s keep it f—ing rolling. It’s over. Finally. Now the real stuff is coming.”
The real stuff will be the upcoming Stanley Cup playoffs. It’s a measure of Ovechkin’s relentlessness — and the Capitals’ standing in the NHL — that his 20th team will enter the postseason as the top seed in the Eastern Conference, perhaps with the best record in the league. That was not lost on Gretzky or NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman, who made their way to the dressing room and addressed Ovechkin and the Caps.
“We all know that this is the ultimate team sport,” Bettman told them. “Now that this goal is accomplished, we know you have another one in mind.”
“Alex, I can’t stress enough how incredible you are,” Gretzky said. “… I felt like I scored the goal, I’m so happy for you.”
He told the Caps that when he broke the old record, held by Gordie Howe, his team’s owner gave him a Rolls-Royce. Ovechkin looked at Leonsis and spread his arms — “Where’s mine?” in his body language. They took photo after photo, the greatest goal scorers in hockey history surrounded by the 2024-25 Washington Capitals, Ovechkin holding the puck that broke the record, wrapped in red-and-white tape that said “895 goals.”
“Congratulations to everyone,” Gretzky concluded.
Congratulations from the Great One. Congratulations from all of hockey. But Alex Ovechkin deserves congratulations beyond all of that. Very few athletes have completely altered what a sport means to a city. He grew up in Moscow. He broke a hallowed record on Long Island. He belongs to Washington, forever and ever and ever.
